After my wife read my previous post, in which I dithered about getting a new iMac, she said, “If it’ll help process photos better, then we should do it.” Just because she was under the influence of headache medication didn’t mean she wasn’t right. I was ready to pull the trigger on a refurb of a 27″ iMac from the Apple store on Friday, but I decided to price-check against Amazon, where I had a shit-ton of gift credit piled up, courtesy of their electronics trade-in store. (You should check this out if you have old iPhones, iPods or other tech-items you don’t use anymore.)
Amazon had marked down the same model of iMac, albeit not as far as Apple’s refurb. But then I discovered that Amazon also wasn’t going to charge sales tax ($100 on the Apple site). And Apple’s shipping options were
a) Free, but at least 1 week’s wait
b) $35 to get it to me by Tuesday or Wednesday
c) $50 to “overnight” it (Monday arrival).
What did Amazon offer? Overnight shipping, on Saturday, for $3.99. So I cashed in my gift-credit, ordered the iMac from Amazon and, sweartagod, had the new computer at my front door less than 24 hours later.
I decided to hold off on migrating my old system on to it until tomorrow, once Amy’s done shooting and processing today’s photos for the cookbook she’s contracted to do this summer.
Instead, I decided I would clean up my dreaded hard drive hoard.
(There are 4 more that are plugged in and thus not pictured.)
Externals
- 1.5 tb Western Digital Elements – music & movies
- 1.5 tb Western Digital Elements – music & movies backup
- 1 tb iomega Prestige – Time Machine drive for 24″ iMac
- 1 tb LaCie in that fancy Neil Poulton design – blank (used to be music & movies backup, but I don’t need that many copies of the library)
- 1 tb Seagate – blank (used to be the music & movies drive, but I don’t trust Seagate drives)
- 500gb Western Digital mybook – backup of 24″ iMac, plus space for other backup files
- 500gb Western Digital mybook- blank
- 320gb Western Digital mybook- backups of old computers and laptops. No, seriously.
- 250gb LaCie shaped like an old-school Mac Mini – for photos (although we’re close to filling this one up)
- 250gb Maxtor – holds about 100gb of video that a pal of mine sent me (someday I’ll convert all those NewsRadio files into mp4/m4v and import ’em into iTunes, I guess)
- 200 gb LaCie – blank (used to back up the photo drive, but we filled it up; it’s got this awesome metal case that weighs a ton)
Portables
- 1tb Western Digital my passport – movies backup (named Vic Taybackup)
- 500gb Western Digital my passport – music backup
- 320gb iomega – music backup (sue me)
- 320gb iomega – backup of photo drive
- 320gb iomega eGo – backup of Amy’s laptop
- 320gb iomega – backup of my laptop and my office computer
Yes, that’s seventeen external/portable hard drives in one room (not all plugged in, mind you), including 2.7 tb in blank drives. Oh, and I have a full music/movie library external drive at my office, bringing the count to eighteen.
How’d it get this bad? Well, I guess I’m just a sucker for NewEgg’s cheap deals. And I can’t throw ’em out, because, um, what if I need one someday?
So the big question is: do I pick up a 2 tb external to use as a Time Machine drive for the new iMac? The 2 tb Western Digital Elements is only $99 at NewEgg . . .